Incubo

This is a splendid early wartime thriller, with the wonderful plot twist that a corpse with a knife in his back is found and disposed of, but then reappears the next day in the same place with another knife in his back. A Nazi spy code-named SI-10 turns out to be identical with the license plate of his Lagonda, in which a secret microphone/speaker is disguised as a dashboard cigarette lighter. This is the only film ever produced by Dwight Taylor, the well known screenwriter who also scripted this. The main appeal of this film however is the powerful presence of the intensely disturbed Diana Barrymore, who combines womanly charm and fascination with a violent streak so terrifying and uncontrollable that it has rarely been encountered so unequivocally on screen. So powerful is this unsettling violence in her nature, that her tragic life story and suicide all too amply confirm that it was not just acting. As an actress, she was a natural. What a pity that she was so self-destructively mixed up, since a major talent was lost to the screen. She could have been the greatest Barrymore of them all if she could have held herself together. Brian Donlevy does very well as the whimsical American who gets mixed up in this story because he has been 'bombed-out' in the London Blitz while dressed in his dinner jacket. There are no gag lines in this script. It is a dark and brooding work, made darker by the London Blackout of course. There are many highly tense moments, and this thriller really works.

Brian Donleavy finds himself mixed up in a curious muddle of spy intrigue, as the corpse he initially agrees to help Diana Barrymore get rid of most unexpectedly returns next night to the same place with knife in his back and all, so they have to do away with it a second time, which proves more difficult, as this is an advanced spy intrigue still in the beginning of the second world war with Nazis all over the place working for Germany in Britain, particularly Scotland, as it appears later. It is not a bad film, although rather mediocre and superficial, but you must not miss the whisky war in the end. Diana Barrymore is beautful and makes the right impression as something enigmatical out of this world, while Brian Donleavy blunders on as usual with obligatory American rudeness. It's great entertainment but not much more, especially today, since the war and its initial perils are over since more than 75 years.

When the story begins, Daniel (Brian Donlevy) meets a woman in London who is in distress. Leslie (Diana Barrymore) has found a dead body in her home and asks this total stranger to get rid of the body. And sane person would get the police...but inexplicably Daniel does exactly what the woman asks. Later, when he returns to the flat, she pretends to not know him...and he is naturally miffed. She also acts rather superior...which is odd because she is appears to be a murderer! Soon, another body turns up in her place...stabbed just like the last one. Now you'd REALLY think a sane person would get the police, but instead the pair run off!! Does any of this make sense? No...not in the least. Eventually, their paths lead to spies and sabotage!!

I think there are two main problems with the film. First, parts of the script simply make no sense. Second, Diana Barrymore was terrible. Every line she delivered sounded haughty and angry...and there was nothing subtle about her acting at all. Clearly she had not inherited her famous father's talents! Most of the reviews are very positive...but I just couldn't get past Barrymore's acting and bad writing.

Nightmare is one of those routine noir films with a wartime era plot from Universal that Alfred Hitchcock might have been able to put over. I saw elements of Saboteur, The 39 Steps and the later North By Northwest in the story.

What Nightmare does give us is a chance to look at Diana Barrymore in one of the few films she made. She certainly had the classical training that enabled her to cast as an Englishwoman who has just had her husband murdered. The husband is played by Henry Daniell and sadly he's on ever so briefly.

Daniell is working on discovering a 5th columnist in the wartime United Kingdom and he turns out to be in the family and titled. Brian Donlevy like any Hitchcockian hero sort of stumbles into the situation.

Nightmare is a good, but routine wartime espionage story. It's a no frills product from Universal which would not have afforded those added Hitchcock like touches to make it truly great.

1942's "Nightmare" was a higher budget 'B' from Universal, who were hoping that name value would make a star out of top billed Diana Barrymore (John's daughter, Drew's aunt). Unfortunately, her obvious talent failed to translate into box office success, quickly retiring from the screen, only to star in tabloid headlines for the rest of her unhappy life (dead at age 38 of a drug overdose in 1960). This particular feature may be her finest showcase, with a most unorthodox leading man in 40 year old Brian Donlevy, whose character, an American stranded in London, raises nary an eyebrow when she asks him to dispose of a dead body in her upstairs study. We later find that the corpse is that of her long unseen husband (Henry Daniell), who turned up on her doorstep in time to be murdered by persons unknown, but not before offering up a dying clue with his last breath. Understandably fearing that she might be arrested, and puzzled when the corpse winds up back in the study after being safely transported across town hours before, she ends up swiping a car so they can escape to Scotland to visit her wealthy cousin (Gavin Muir). Brian Donlevy proved to be an underrated leading man, but did fine work here, and in Fox programmers "Half Angel," "Born Reckless," and especially "Midnight Taxi." Henry Daniell is criminally wasted, but other small roles are well played by such familiar performers as Arthur Shields, Hans Conreid, John Abbott, and Ian Wolfe (playing a nastier butler than usual). Holds up fairly well until the end, but definitely NOT a horror film, despite its status among Universal's SHOCK! package of genre titles issued to television in the late 50's (Pittsburgh's CHILLER THEATER never showed it, but Minneapolis' HORROR INCORPORATED did).